Afternoon Links: People Were More Excited to Reunite With Robin Williams Than With Michael J. Fox

Two lovable comedy icons returned to their mutual hometown of Sitcomland last night, but America acted like Robin Williams was the cool guy who’d flown around the world on a hang glider while Michael J. Fox was the neighborhood dweeb who set a jump-rope record on the corner. An enormous 15.6 million viewers tuned in to see Williams’s pilot — the one Andy Greenwald called “a not-great version of a good idea winging its way onto our screens through a combination of momentum, optimism, and Williams’s trademark flop sweat” — making The Crazy Ones the most viewed new show this autumn. NBC’s The Michael J. Fox Show only reeled in 7.2 million viewers, less than half as many as CBS’s new hit. In pure 1985 terms, this is borderline impossible to understand — ’85 for MJF: Back to the Future, Teen Wolf; ’85 for R-Willy: nada. But when you remember that there’s a show called The Big Bang Theory and it has its own cult as big as a medium-size nation (last night: 18.3 million viewers, the show’s personal best), and that this mysterious show played lead-in to Robin Williams, it makes sense, kind of.

Conan is on LinkedIn. Is there a medium the man can’t make funny? Latte art?

Katy Perry flower-childed the cover of Billboard. Critical bit that’s not in the abridged web version: “I’ll probably turn into more of a Joni Mitchell. As I inch towards my 30s, I think my fourth record will be more of an acoustic guitar album.” Katy is 30 in 13 months, just to be clear.